Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink

Hyland’s writing style straddles the feminist textbook “criticism on the power of fashion” approach to the pop culture warm embrace of beats, punks and hippies as trendsetters appropriated by our capitalist high fashion world. Would love it if there were illustrations, as when she alludes to the differences between influencers on Tik Tok, Instagram and VSCO - or even the uniforms of the “rebels.” This book provides lots of points to further investigate how the fabric of fashion has become a global enterprise, transcending old ideas about the hegemony of haute couture and the inevitable rise of DYI trending via the internet.

This book is a collection of great essays. Ms. Hyland navigates the intricacies of the fashion world. The authenticity and true importance of fashion that we experience everyday.

Fantastic read by an insightful and incisive author.

I’m not sure what it says about me that I finished reading DRESS CODE by Véronique Hyland’s fabulous book of fashion essays on bed rest lounging in my oversized sweatshirt and joggers. It evoked all sorts of feels: it made me miss real clothes, swiping through my closet on the daily, and, especially, my shoes. Oh, how I miss my heels.Hyland is ELLE’s fashion features director among having her work featured in countless other famous fashion and regular magazines. So, if you are like me and enjoy flipping through ELLE’s pages each month, this is a book you will love because think of it is as an expansion of those beloved articles.The care that Hyland has put into each essay is astounding. This small book is a little over 250 pages, but it packs a punch with 15 essays. It covers four major topics: Underpinnings: Why We Wear What We Wear, The Top Layer: Fashion and the Wider World, High Heels: Dressing Up for the Patriarchy, and Moon Boots and Jumpsuits: The Future of Fashion.If you’re a fashionista or just interested in fashion history, this book will interest you. Even though I read the entire book, different essays stood out more. Three that come to mind are “Patagonia on Bedford Avenue,” “Déjà Hue,” and “The Revolution Will Be Spandex-Clad.” I connected with them and found myself googling events or people Hyland had mentioned. Whereas others were just more of a read to me. I equate this to reading an issue of ELLE, some essays I love, others I read once. But I also see it as a great discussion book - like the magazine - because different essays will interest different people.I don’t know if you want to call me a fashionista right now laying here in my joggers and an oversized sweatshirt, so maybe just call me a fashion nerd until I’m off bed rest. But I really enjoyed my time reading DRESS CODE. It made me feel educated and fancy, something I really needed at the moment.

For someone that has a single fashion bone in her entire body - a tiny one while we're at it - I had way too much fun reading this book. "Dress Code" covers different themes in the fashion world with both a history lens and a provocative writing style, much as a longer editorial in a magazine, which is the author's background.Even needing to google most of the names of the people mentioned, the particular pieces of clothing and the fashion shows in Paris/London with their couture masters, I really enjoyed getting a new perspective into the fashion world and industry. For me, the concept of fashion as central is someone's life is foreign, but reading this book it not only made perfect sense but also gave me interesting insights on how we can use clothing to our own advantage.My favorite chapters were the one about work clothes and their impacts on people's perceptions of success and status, the one on attires for trials and the expectations they try to convey, and the one on the evolution of women's clothes and the suffering they can bring to the wearer. Some common themes throughout the chapters were also super interesting, such as comprehending why fashion holds a different value for men and woman, based on their role of creator & muse/consumer. One discussion of "doing it for oneself" while at the same time meeting the world's expectations was very eye-opening.Hyland managed to write a book perfect for the curious but unfashionable people, the ones that just blindly follow (or try to to follow) the trends. For the initiated on the theme, it might read as too obvious, but for me it was fun, interesting and certainly full of content that I wouldn't have consumed otherwise.

This book was fun to read, full of new information, and opinionated but not unpleasantly so. That's a lot for one collection of essays, and I just raised my four star rating to a five. As an old person, I was particularly interested in what she had to say about the internet, fashion, identity, and all that. So much I did not know!!

Even if you don't think you care about fashion, you will get a lot out of reading this book. I thought I didn't, but picked up this book at a friend's recommendation, and found myself eagerly looking forward to each chapter I got to read. I literally laughed out loud every few pages, I now understand fashion (not just runway fashion, everyday stuff) way better, and I was never lost due to a lack of insider fashion knowledge or anything like that. As a bonus: the chapters are the perfect length for a commute!

I don't know much about fashion, and this is the first book I've ever read on the topic, but Veronique Hyland's insight and wit make these essays a rich exploration into our culture and society more broadly--I catch myself seeing the world around me differently since picking up this book!

I was curious to learn something about millennials but I stumbled into the most self-celebrating and arrogant description. The arrogant and self-celebrating description of these world-changers could make me laugh if it weren’t too irritatingly arrogant